fallbackcg

Highlights from Dreamforce 2021

by with No Comment Dreamforce

As the dust settles on Dreamforce 2021, we take a quick look back at some of our highlights. The main change this year was that it was part in-person (in San Francisco) and part virtual (on Salesforce+). It’s a small step to getting back to ‘normal’ again after so many other events have been virtual only or simply cancelled or postponed.

 

Dreamforce 2021: Special Guests

As per previous events, Dreamforce delivered in terms of special guests. Jane Fonda spoke about ‘the movement to protect our oceans’. Will Smith was interviewed about his life and one of his personal causes, ‘Storytellers of Color’. While The Foo Fighters entertained attendees alongside some familiar faces…

 

Cloud Galacticos Dreamforce 2021 Highlights

Phil Walton, CEO

Our CEO, Phil Walton, did a ‘Dreamforce 2021 Special’ Tip of the Week with his highlights.

One: DF21 on Salesforce+

Two: Back it up

Three: Trillion Trees

Four: WFR RIP

 

Mark Jones, Salesforce Consultant

“The first one that I want to highlight is Trailhead for Slack. I love Slack and Trailhead, so it is fantastic to see a way that brings both together.

My second highlight is a personal one (and maybe a little selfishly) is when a question I submitted for True to the Core was answered live. I’m a self-diagnosed Flownatic, and when the eventual retirement of Workflow Rules and Process Builder was announced at the recent Admin Preview as part of Release Readiness Live ‘for Winter 22 the first question I wanted to see get answered was when will this happen? 

You can get more thoughts from Mark and his highlights from Dreamforce 2021 here.

 

Luke Menzfeld, Salesforce Consultant

“I enjoyed watching Dreamforce 2021 on Salesforce+. There’s definitely some cool things coming out of Dreamforce. In no particular order, I’d say: 1 – Slack First Analytics, 2 – Ask Data, 3 – Multi-Object Pages, and 4 – Dynamic Related Lists.”

 

Dreamforce 2022

So how was Dreamforce 2021 for you? Like many people from the Salesforce eco-system, we are looking forward to 2022 and fingers crossed we will be able to attend in person…

You can still catch highlights from Dreamforce 2021 here.

 

About Cloud Galacticos

Cloud Galacticos is a Salesforce Consulting Partner with an all-star team. We are user and developer group leaders, bloggers, MVPs and all round Salesforce nerds. We have people all over the UK including Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Sheffield, and London. If you are looking for a Salesforce partner with experience who can help you make the most of your org, why not give us a call?

 

Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Learn MOAR – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #453

by with No Comment DreamforceTip of the WeekTrailhead

Welcome to my Salesforce Tip of the Week #453

 

Tip 1 – Dreamforce!?

The big news today is the confirmation that there will be an in-person Dreamforce this year, Sept 21-23. Details are thin at this stage, but the press release says “Dreamforce will take place across a global campus, including San Francisco, New York City, London and Paris” and “in the U.S., anyone attending in-person will be required to be fully vaccinated “.

At this point I can’t imagine making travel plans to be at a large in-person event! I appreciate events like this take time to plan, and maybe by September the world will be a different place. But today this seems too much too soon.

Click here to register, or at least keep an eye on it as further details are released.

You can also see some more details in this article from the San Francisco Chronicle, suggesting it will be capped at 5000 in San Francisco. I wonder how big the global events in NY, London and Paris will be?

Tip 2 – Learn MOAR Summer ’21

Complete a “Learn MOAR Summer ’21 trailmix” to earn a community badge and a chance to win a Trailhead Certification voucher. The Admin and Developer Trailmixes each contain a highlights module and links to further reading. Complete one or both before July 31, 2021 to join the competition.

 

Final Tip of the Week – Sign up

Remember if you have enjoyed this Tip of the Week then sign up for the weekly email, direct to your inbox here!

Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

TrailheaDX, Trails, and even Dreamforce – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #448

by with No Comment DreamforceSalesforce EventsSF NewsTip of the WeekTrailhead

Tip 1 – TrailheaDX

June 23rd will be TrailheaDX, you can register now for free here. Originally a Developer focussed event, more recently it is aimed at the whole Salesforce audience…”Devs, admins, architects, partners, and IT leaders, join us as we gather globally with Trailblazers looking to expand their Salesforce skills”.

It is a 1 day virtual event, so don’t expect the same as the in-person events, but the agenda includes:

35 Product demos

27 Content Episodes

25 Expert led rooms

5 Broadcast channels

Tip 2 – SDGs

As part of our commitment to promoting sustainable development, I found this Trail very useful. Take a look at the sustainable development goals and see which you can help on. It’s everyone’s responsibility.

Tip 3 – Dreamforce!?

This week saw an article in The Business Journals quoting that Salesforce were ‘absolutely committed’ to holding an in-person Dreamforce this year, Sept 21st-24th. To say I am surprised is the understatement of the week!

Final Tip – Sign up

Remember if you have enjoyed this week’s tip then sign up for the weekly email, direct to your inbox here!

Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Mastering apex & events news – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #429

by with No Comment CertificationDevelopmentDreamforceSalesforce EventsTip of the Week

DreamTX

DreamTX is split over 14-17th Dec (or 15-18th in EMEA/AsiaPac regions). As well as the full details here, there is also a Developer focused blog post here which highlights some recommended viewings and Q&A sessions.

The Developer focused post highlights sessions covering areas like Lightning Web Components, integrations and APIs, and Salesforce Developer Tooling. But there are plenty more sessions to get booked on your agenda!

And just in case you wondered…’DreamTX’ is the name Marc Benioff decided upon to signify a full ‘Dreamforce Trailblazer Experience’.

 

London’s Calling 2021

Kudos to the London’s Calling team for announcing that they will be back on 19th March 2021 for a virtual event (this time a planned virtual event!) . Just a date for the diary so far, but keep an eye out for registration & tickets. Fingers crossed maybe it could be the opposite for 2021, where we may be unexpectedly allowed to meet in person due to the success of the Covid vaccine, and Francis, Todd, Louise, Kerry, and Amanda may be looking for a last minute venue!? (I don’t wish anyone extra work, but I will still have my fingers crossed for this!).

 

Mastering Apex

Congratulations to our COO Paul Battisson on his new book, out this week, ‘Mastering Apex Programming‘. Publishing his first book earlier this year was a major achievement, but TWO whilst being overworked and in a global pandemic is seriously impressive! I am sure we will write a future guest post with Paul so we can hear more about the book, and the differences between the two, but it is fair to say this builds on top of ‘Learning Salesforce Development with Apex’, and is the next step once you are comfortable with the fundamentals.

STOP PRESS – use code ’25APEX’ for 25% off the ebook on packtpub, or 25% Amazon.com with this link.

Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

MVP nominations & Dreamforce updates – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #425

by with No Comment DreamforceNewsSalesforce ProductsTip of the Week

Salesforce MVP Nominations

The annual window for nominating your favourite Salesforce community heroes is now open (until December 1st). The MVP award is given for Expertise, Leadership, and Generosity. Read the full blog post here. It is a great way for all of us to recognise and reward those that have helped us and helped others. Maybe it is someone that answered one of your questions on the Answers forum or Stack exchange, or someone who organises your local User Group Community events? It may even be a Salesforce blogger (don’t worry, you dont need to nominate me), podcaster, or author of Salesforce book. The important thing is, these are all people who volunteer their time, to help the people around them.

It has been noted that this year’s process may be a bit different to previous years. Some people will have found themselves with much less time to focus on Community work, where as others may have found they had lots of free time available and in fact benefitted more from giving back whilst they had the chance. Either way, I think helping is helping! The process always looks at contribution over a decent length of time. So feel free to nominate someone even if they haven’t managed exactly the same as previous years. Note the form does seem to get longer every year, but I think it is worth setting aside some time to do this.

MVP Nominations

In other news…

Master Detail reparenting

Something I noticed this week and thought I would share…By default, records can’t be reparented in master-detail relationships. Administrators can, however, allow child records in master-detail relationships on custom objects to be reparented to different parent records by selecting the Allow reparenting option in the master-detail relationship

Reparenting

Rebranding

More rebranding of the Clouds this week, with Salesforce CPQ being renamed ‘Revenue Cloud’.

Dreamforce To You updates

Details of ‘Dreamforce To You’ are starting to be announced, including personalized meetings, the Keynote with Marc Benioff and friends (Dec 2nd), and a virtual TDX (Dec 14-17th). Sign up and keep an eye on this site for more details as they are announced.

Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Dreamforce To You – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #423

by with No Comment DreamforceNewsTeam GalacticosTip of the Week

Dreamforce To You

If things were different, we may have been jumping onto flights next weekend for a trip to DF2020. But instead ‘Dreamforce To You‘ invades our homes, in some sort of retaliation for us invading San Francisco for so many years. It is, I quote, “completely reimagined” so hopefully not just days of zoom meetings?? On the positive side there will be a Keynote from Marc Benioff (reserved seating for everyone), and there will be no jetlag.

Dreamforce To You

Dreamforce To You

What will you miss about an in-person Dreamforce? And what will you be glad not to leave the house for? I discussed this with some of my colleagues and we shared our thoughts…let’s add your thoughts as a guest too, ping me!

In other news…

Org Picker

I mentioned a while back about the updated Help Experience, and something I revisited today was the Org Picker. Now that Orgs are being linked to the one Trailhead account, and with linking email address, the page has now filled up a bit! I can’t share my personal screenshot of the Orgs because there are LOADS, and many subject to NDAs, but I had ‘fun’ looking at Orgs listed that I had forgotten about a long time since. The practical use for this page is to Log in, or to get support.

Org Picker

Further info

“The Salesforce Organization Picker will display an Salesforce Organization tile for all Salesforce Organizations you have access to with the provided credentials. This is based on the Salesforce Accounts you have connected to your Trailblazer.me Profile.
The page will also display any additional Salesforce Organizations you have associated with email addresses linked to your Trailblazer.me profile, even if you have not explicitly linked those credentials.
Each Salesforce Organization will showcase your role within the Salesforce Organization, how many open cases you have and some key details about the Salesforce Organization. Each tile will have a button to Log In or Get Support ”

See more details here.

Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

Salesforce Labs Components – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #415

by with No Comment AppExchangeDreamforceLightningTip of the Week

Salesforce Labs have outdone themselves this time, with 15 Lightning Web Components to play around with. Salesforce Labs produces free Apps that are created by Salesforce employees (as an experiment, not usually as part of their day job), and added to the Appexchange for us all to use. I could take up 15 Fridays of ‘Tip of the Week’ blogs on this, but instead here is a great list that you can take a look at. There are too many to choose a favourite from, but I am going to start with a look at the Lightning File Explorer.

Salesforce Labs Apps

Salesforce Labs

In Other News…

Who is going to pick up your device?

I had a few days break, walking and running in the Peak District which was amazing, and on the way found an iPhone in the middle of a field! How do you reconnect a device to it’s owner? Or how can a first responder find out about an unconscious person from a locked phone? If you haven’t done it, like me, and like the owners of the iPhone, set up an ICE or Medical contacts, it is free and fast and available on Apple or Android devices! Thankfully with some detective work, I got the phone back to the owner…and thanks to our Marketing Manager Ben Duong, who managed to track them down with just 1 tweet to his network!! Never mind 6 degrees of separation, with Ben it is just 1.

Now what for Dreamforce?

Here is a great post from Keir Bowden aka Bob Buzzard, about what can and can’t be recreated without an actual in-person Dreamforce. I think we all agree, Virtual events are definitely no real substitute! But it looks like it will be quite a while before any of us board the plane for a long exotic trip to a Dreamin’ event or Dreamforce 🙁

fallbackcg

Team Galacticos Salesforce Event Highlights

by with No Comment DreamforceSalesforce EventsTeam Galacticos

Anyone in the Salesforce ecosystem will know, we’re one big ohana. And before the Covid-19 situation affected us all, events and conferences were a big part of what we do (from local user groups and community Dreamin’ events, to large scale World Tours and of course, Dreamforce).

With all Salesforce events for 2020 now being re-imagined, some of the team members at Cloud Galacticos tell us their event highlights from previous years.

 

Neel Meghani CTO – India Dreamin 2018

Neel at India Dreamin

“My second time attending India Dreamin was back in December 2018. Representing Cloud Galacticos was Phil Walton (CEO) and our new (at the time) COO Paul Battisson, along with myself. This was also a very memorable event for me as it was the first time speaking at such an event.

From my experience of Salesforce related events, India Dreamin stands out above and beyond all others. There seems to be much more passion for learning about the platform. The entire two days had the feel of something special happening and that the Salesforce community should take notice!” 

 

 

Paul Battisson, COO – Dreamforce 2014

Paul presenting at Dreamforce

“This was my second Dreamforce, so I had learned a few of the newbie lessons from my first Dreamforce and was much better prepared for the craziness. The reason this is my favourite Dreamforce is that I did my favourite ever talk for the first time – ‘Building Machine Learning Systems With Apex’ with my then colleague Jen Wyher.

Why is this my favourite talk? Firstly, it took a tremendous amount of effort to get the system working. Secondly, this means Jen and I hold the record for being the first people to discuss doing AI/Machine Learning on Salesforce, years before Einstein. We got such great feedback from the talk. It started so many conversations with people that changed how I spent the rest of the event.”

 

Phil Walton, CEO – Punta Dreamin’, Uruguay 2018

Phil at Punta Dreamin

“Salesforce events have taken me around the world! I am proud to say I have spoken at events on five continents, and Punta Dreamin was a great excuse to travel to a whole new continent for me. I had never been to South America, so my trip to Uruguay – via a few days in Buenos Aires, Argentina – was an amazing trip. 

Great food, great wine, and Aldo was a great host. Also I was training for the Manchester marathon at the time, so I running in the heat of Buenos Aires and Punta was amazing. I always say running is a great way to see the sights of a new city.

Phil running in Buenos Aires

I look back on international trips like Uruguay, India, Morocco, USA, and around Europe with fond memories. Hopefully they will be back soon and we’ll meet again!” 

 

Val Southern, Senior Consultant – Salesforce World Tour London 2019

Val at World Tour London

“At Cloud Galacticos, we work remotely so it’s always good when the team gets a chance to meet up at Salesforce events. And for me, one of my annual highlights has been the Salesforce World Tour London in May.

Last year’s conference was great. We held our first ‘Client and Partner Drinks Reception’ the night before. It was at a fabulous rooftop bar near Salesforce’s London office. As one of the  sponsors of the conference, we had a stand which meant our day started at 7am, and didn’t finish till 6pm. But as usual, the day flew by, especially as we had a special guest keeping us company at the stand in the way of Paul Sturgess, Britain’s Tallest Man!

It’s a shame that the event couldn’t happen this year, but fingers crossed for 2021!”

 

Nkosi Ncube, Developer – Mulesoft Connect 2019

Nkosi Ncube at MuleSoft CONNECT 2019

“I have been to a few Salesforce events, the most notable ones being the Salesforce World Tour. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 most events were not to be this year. 

However, I did manage to attend the Mulesoft Connect event in London in October 2019. The main highlight was actually finally meeting a fellow Galacticos, Mike Gill. And of course I can’t forget the swag (very important at events!).

We hope and pray these events will be back soon!”

 

Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

No Virtual Dreamforce 2020? – Phil’s Salesforce Tip of the Week #412

by with No Comment DreamforceTip of the Week

In an interview this week Marc Benioff suggested that there may be no Dreamforce this year, of any kind. It would be a shame of course, I have some great memories of time spent at DF, but maybe this is a chance to redesign it? Lets be honest, it’s too busy, too big for the location, and only will get busier and bigger.

Benioff Dreamforce 2020

Like many I have been anticipating that there would be some sort of virtual event this year in place of the in person event. Let’s see what the next few weeks and months bring!

In other news…

Auto add fields to report types

Ever edited a report and struggled to find a field? It can be a massive headache, usually caused by a Custom Report Type being built before the Custom Field was created. Thank you to North England Community co-leader Clare Ramsaran for sharing this… “Beta in Winter ‘21: when a new field is created it will be automatically added to all associated report types” hoorah!

Free App of the Week – Star Rating Lightning Web Component

The latest free App from the wonderful SalesforceLabs is this star rating component. Deserves a 5 star rating!

Phil's Salesforce Tip of the Week

#380 2020 Salesforce Events and Training in India

by with No Comment DreamforceSalesforce EventsTip of the Week
2020 Salesforce events

Tip 1 – Events in 2020

Thanks to SharinPix for compiling this great infographic of Salesforce events around the globe. Click for the link to the full list…where will you visit this year?

Salesforce training in India

Tip 2 – Salesforce in India

Last week Salesforce announced it plans to train 250,000 students in India, in order to fulfil the expected extra 550,000 new Salesforce related roles in the coming years. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and what similar initiatives may happen elsewhere!

The future for Dreamforce?

Tip 3 – Dreamforce Las Vegas??

After Apple, Google, and Facebook all moved their conferences away from San Francisco, now Oracle have done the same. Sources say “the 60,000 person event just got too big”. So where does that leave the 170,000 strong Dreamforce in the future?

Personally I don’t think it will ever move. But considering the ecosystem is growing and growing, and San Francisco has been creaking under the pressure of the current numbers for years now, the questions will arise every year.